Morons Of The Storm
This is quite possibly the most bipartisan column I will have ever written, as I spare no quarter to those figures who I disagree with and members of my own party. Catefory 5 mistakes were made from the archbishop of New Orleans's failure to cancel Mass that weekend down to Jefferson Parish's decision to let the hoi polloi re-enter the parish at the risk of slowing down infrastructure rebuilding for more affected areas.
But then there were those who stood out as true "morons of the storm." Grave errors were made prior to Katrina's crash into the fragile Louisiana coastline and I am taking this opportunity to do a little venting and point some fingers (I won't mention which one).
Mayor C. Ray Nagin To his credit, Mayor Clarence (that being hizzoner's first name that he hates, though his mother loves to call him), fumbled at first with the parked buses that could have been used to evacuate people in advance had his administration had developed a well-laid plan of action that should have been handed down from the previous 4 administrations and fine-tuned. After the Ivan scare of 2004, Nagin should have taken disaster preparations more seriously instead of focusing his attention on installing new parking meter machines that don't accept dollar bills.
His public comments declaring looting a secondary matter caused it to become an overnight priority as New Orleans experienced its worst riots since the Robert Charles incident in 1900. His later "iron fist" approach showed that the political "scales" had finally fallen from his eyes after watching his city burn. His passionate pleas on behalf of New Orleans have struck a chord with the nation. About as close to a Giuliani as there was in the New Orleans-Louisiana hurricane crisis leadership though his previous butterfingers are inexcusable.
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco If you don't know my take by now on this poor school board member excuse we have for a governor, you have not been reading my columns. I'll sum up her most grievous mistake in one sentence: Blanco has refused to sign over control of the National Guard to the federal government and has turned to a Clinton administration official, so basically the DNC is running Louisiana's smear the president-save the people (in that order) efforts. Maybe Edwin Edwards should be pardoned and running the state and Blanco should be in Oakdale. Not even "Fast Eddie" could have eclipsed the looters.
Speaker Denny Hastert Let's hope this guy doesn't join ER. Got cancer? Why waste my time smoker! Liver disease? Lay off the hooch! Chronic obesity? Well...um...it's not his fault he's big boned.
His comments about the wisdom of rebuilding New Orleans were unwise and rocked the morale of a devastated people. I hope he likes gas at $4 a gallon and his farmers are happy having to eat all that corn they won't be shipping through New Orleans's port. The speaker's comments were far more hurtful than Majority Leader...sorry...EX-Majority Leader Trent Lott's platitudes about a 100 politician. Louisiana's GOP Congressmen could have a tough time explaining to voters that their first vote in the 2007 Congress will be to re-elect the "heel" wrestler.
The Louisiana Republican Party As a category 5 hurricane was briskly moving towards southeast Louisiana, the leadership of the state GOP decided to hold its quarterly meeting as scheduled. Despite that 90% of the New Orleans area's delegation was busy boarding up their homes and running for their lives, the show went on. An attempt to have the meeting adjourned immediately after convening was laughed off when an officer smugly said that "he wish he would have brought his clubs along to play golf later that day." Said member also did not live in an area where the hurricane was going. Holding the meeting was a slap in the face of the New Orleans area GOP leaders while those who faithfully and stupidly tended to their duties (Yo!), lost their life's possessions. So much for "compassionate conservatism."
Jesse Jackson, RFK, Jr, and Arriana Huffington Truly the morons of the storm. The reverend claimed that the storm was racist. The scion of the martyred American civil rights politician claimed the hurricane was just desserts for Mississippi. And the Hellenic golddigger, who gave Bobby-2 a forum on her "celebri-blog," followed that gem up with wheeling out an unknown though self-proclaimed civil rights leader from New Orleans who ludicrously told the world that black people were eating corpses, if it indeed happened, it was an isolated event. The reason why so many victims of the hurricane were black is academic (New Orleans is 70% minority). To use this tragedy as a platform to race-bait is shameful.
But then there were those who stood out as true "morons of the storm." Grave errors were made prior to Katrina's crash into the fragile Louisiana coastline and I am taking this opportunity to do a little venting and point some fingers (I won't mention which one).
Mayor C. Ray Nagin To his credit, Mayor Clarence (that being hizzoner's first name that he hates, though his mother loves to call him), fumbled at first with the parked buses that could have been used to evacuate people in advance had his administration had developed a well-laid plan of action that should have been handed down from the previous 4 administrations and fine-tuned. After the Ivan scare of 2004, Nagin should have taken disaster preparations more seriously instead of focusing his attention on installing new parking meter machines that don't accept dollar bills.
His public comments declaring looting a secondary matter caused it to become an overnight priority as New Orleans experienced its worst riots since the Robert Charles incident in 1900. His later "iron fist" approach showed that the political "scales" had finally fallen from his eyes after watching his city burn. His passionate pleas on behalf of New Orleans have struck a chord with the nation. About as close to a Giuliani as there was in the New Orleans-Louisiana hurricane crisis leadership though his previous butterfingers are inexcusable.
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco If you don't know my take by now on this poor school board member excuse we have for a governor, you have not been reading my columns. I'll sum up her most grievous mistake in one sentence: Blanco has refused to sign over control of the National Guard to the federal government and has turned to a Clinton administration official, so basically the DNC is running Louisiana's smear the president-save the people (in that order) efforts. Maybe Edwin Edwards should be pardoned and running the state and Blanco should be in Oakdale. Not even "Fast Eddie" could have eclipsed the looters.
Speaker Denny Hastert Let's hope this guy doesn't join ER. Got cancer? Why waste my time smoker! Liver disease? Lay off the hooch! Chronic obesity? Well...um...it's not his fault he's big boned.
His comments about the wisdom of rebuilding New Orleans were unwise and rocked the morale of a devastated people. I hope he likes gas at $4 a gallon and his farmers are happy having to eat all that corn they won't be shipping through New Orleans's port. The speaker's comments were far more hurtful than Majority Leader...sorry...EX-Majority Leader Trent Lott's platitudes about a 100 politician. Louisiana's GOP Congressmen could have a tough time explaining to voters that their first vote in the 2007 Congress will be to re-elect the "heel" wrestler.
The Louisiana Republican Party As a category 5 hurricane was briskly moving towards southeast Louisiana, the leadership of the state GOP decided to hold its quarterly meeting as scheduled. Despite that 90% of the New Orleans area's delegation was busy boarding up their homes and running for their lives, the show went on. An attempt to have the meeting adjourned immediately after convening was laughed off when an officer smugly said that "he wish he would have brought his clubs along to play golf later that day." Said member also did not live in an area where the hurricane was going. Holding the meeting was a slap in the face of the New Orleans area GOP leaders while those who faithfully and stupidly tended to their duties (Yo!), lost their life's possessions. So much for "compassionate conservatism."
Jesse Jackson, RFK, Jr, and Arriana Huffington Truly the morons of the storm. The reverend claimed that the storm was racist. The scion of the martyred American civil rights politician claimed the hurricane was just desserts for Mississippi. And the Hellenic golddigger, who gave Bobby-2 a forum on her "celebri-blog," followed that gem up with wheeling out an unknown though self-proclaimed civil rights leader from New Orleans who ludicrously told the world that black people were eating corpses, if it indeed happened, it was an isolated event. The reason why so many victims of the hurricane were black is academic (New Orleans is 70% minority). To use this tragedy as a platform to race-bait is shameful.
posted by BourbonConservative at 9:28 PM
5 Comments:
So you are giving President Bush a pass then?
What do you think of him personally leading the investigatory effort? I doubt if they will examine the effects of budget cuts on the maintenance of the levees or the drainage system.
I will agree with you that the Governor deserves a lot of blame, but there is just no way that you can look at the budget cuts and attendant neglect of the flood control system that you can't blame the President. Kevin Drum makes the case against Bush pretty well.
In fact, his volunteering to personally lead the inquiry, while it could be considered leadership IF there were no outstanding issues involving his own decisions, appears to me much more to be an attempt to control the agenda and either whitewash or limit the scope of the inquiry to not examine critical decisions that we made, in some cases months or years ago but certainly played a part in it.
As far as the race thing, I would suggest that aside from the high number of dead people who are poor and black, you will see an awful lot of formerly middle class (and mostly white) refugees joining the poor black ones very soon. That is because there are no jobs and no money, and the people who hold the mortgages on their homes will soon be asking to collect. They may have been able to find a hotel room last week, but the cash they took with them is running out and they will soon have a car with an empty tank and nothing else. This has been very underreported, but it is another disaster waiting to happen over the coming weeks and months. And most insurance companies don't cover flood damage unless you buy a separate policy.
Also-- you might like this (and probably the first time you ever agreed with Bill Clinton):
According to a paragraph in Saturday's Arizona Republic,
In Syracuse, N.Y., former President Clinton was discussing New Orleans' dilemma when someone described the speaker's comments. Had they been in the same place when the remarks were made, Clinton said, "I'm afraid I would have assaulted him."
That is actually pretty remarkable for Clinton, who made a point of always keeping his emotions under control in public and not reacting with visible anger no matter what anyone said about him.
I am not giving the Adminsitration a free pass on anything. However, if the president would have signed the flood control appropriations, it would not have sprevented Katrina's destructive path through LA. The problemfor St. Bernard and the lower Ninth Ward is the MRGO. And several presidents, Republican and democrat, along with numerous other state, Federal, and local officials are guilty for that monster's continued existence.
Bourbonconservative:
You are correct that the funds were not for the levees in question. However, the funds cut this year and in other years were for flood control projects. For example, this year's cut was largely to the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.
Now, improved drainage would not have prevented the disaster, but it would certainly have mitigated it by giving more water a way to get out.
Further, this shouldn't be a partisan issue but it is-- most environmentalists (like myself) are liberals-- but conservatives (mostly Republicans but some Democrats) have ignored wetlands for the purpose of making money. Because of shipping canals cut through wetlands and barrier islands and the channeling of the river so that it dumps its silt into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana is literally losing (according to one article I read yesterday in a local paper while visiting Albuquerque) 24 square miles per year to the sea.
Now, when I lived in Corpus Christi, Texas some years back (another city that has had its scrapes with hurricanes) I know it was considered a relief anytime a hurricane came ashore in a wetland area, because it acted like a sponge that absorbed much of the initial energy of the hurricane.
And I guarantee you that if anyone opposed the building of shipping canals through environmentally fragile areas, aside from those who were directly endangered by them, it was environmentalists. Just too bad we weren't successful.
And to be honest, I am also religious, and I am also led to be an environmentalist by my belief that God made a wonderful world for us, and we should try to tread softly on His creation. Why more religious conservatives don't hold that view (and push it politically), I don't know.
It looks like this blog is dying.
But thank you very much for your daily updates from an area no one had reported on (until the last couple of days). From what I hear, Plaquemines is worse.
Good luck and God Bless you and yours and your community.
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